Title: Six Hats and a Suitcase
Fandom: Culture Club
Pairing: Boy George/Jon Moss
Rating: G
Length: 955 words
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: This was so fun to write. I love these two so much.
Written for: Challenge 508 - Anticipation
Summary: George is packing like he's emigrating, Jon is pretending not to panic about how much he cares. Four days before their first holiday together, the flat is full of hats, silk shirts, and things neither of them are quite ready to say out loud. Domestic chaos, soft glances, one suitcase, and the quiet realization that this might be something real.

The suitcase had been open on the bedroom floor for three days
.
Jon had tripped over it twice. He hadn't said anything either time, which he felt deserved some sort of recognition -- a certificate, perhaps, or at minimum a small trophy. Jonathan Moss: Remarkable Restraint in the Face of Domestic Chaos. He could put it on the mantlepiece.

"I need the blue one," George announced from somewhere inside the wardrobe, his voice slightly muffled by what Jon assumed was approximately forty percent of everything he owned. A silk shirt sailed out and landed on the bed. Then another. Then something that might have been a scarf or possibly a small decorative flag -- Jon genuinely couldn't tell.

"You have a blue one," Jon said, nodding at the suitcase. "You have three blue ones."

George emerged from the wardrobe looking faintly offended. His hair was doing something extraordinary, braids half-pinned, the rest falling loose around his shoulders, and he had a hat on that Jon was fairly certain hadn't existed in their flat yesterday. "Those are different blues, Jon."

"They're the same blue."

"They are categorically not the same blue." George held up two shirts side by side with the gravity of a man presenting evidence in court. "This one is cerulean. This one is cobalt. Completely different."

Jon looked at the shirts. He looked at George. He picked up his tea.

"You cannot bring six hats either," he said.

George gasped. Actually gasped, clutching the nearest hat to his chest like Jon had suggested leaving behind a family member. "I need six hats."

"For one week?"

"What if I need options?"

"For one week, George."

George set his jaw in that particular way that meant he had already decided and was simply waiting for Jon to finish objecting. Jon had catalogued this expression over the past several months with the quiet thoroughness he applied to most things he found interesting, which was, he was only recently beginning to admit to himself, most things about George.

"Fine," George said, in a tone that meant not fine at all, I will be bringing the hats. He turned back to the wardrobe and Jon watched him disappear into it again, humming something low and tuneless under his breath.

Four days. They were leaving in four days.

Jon set his tea down and looked at the suitcase on the floor -- George's suitcase, already half full despite being open since Tuesday, despite the fact that they weren’t leaving until Saturday, despite all reason and logic and the basic principles of efficient travel. There was a hat on top of the pile. Obviously.

He thought about the tickets on the kitchen counter. He'd looked at them this morning while the kettle boiled, just for a moment, just because they were there.

Two passengers, they said. Like it was a simple thing.

He could hear George still humming in the wardrobe, the soft shuffle of hangers, the occasional decisive hmm of someone making very important decisions about cerulean versus cobalt. The afternoon light was going golden through the curtains. Somewhere outside a car passed, and then it was quiet again.

Jon thought: I am not nervous about this.

Then he thought: I am extremely nervous about this.

Not bad nervous. Not the kind that sat cold in his stomach before a show, before something that could go wrong. This was different. This was the kind that felt embarrassingly close to giddy, which was not a word Jon Moss would ever apply to himself out loud, but here, privately, in the late afternoon light with George humming in the next room --

"Jon." George reappeared in the doorway, holding something sparkly. "Do you think I need this?"

"What is it?"

"I don't know actually." George turned it over in his hands. "I found it..."

"Then no."

George looked at it for another moment, then tossed it on to the bed with everything else. Then he looked at Jon, and something in his expression shifted -- softened, maybe, or settled. He crossed the room and stopped close enough that Jon could smell his perfume, something warm and a little sweet that Jon had stopped being able to smell without his chest doing something inconvenient.

"Four days," George said quietly.

"Four days," Jon agreed.

George's eyes were doing that thing, that particular attentive thing, like Jon was interesting. Jon had never quite worked out what to do when George looked at him like that, except stand very still and hope his face wasn't giving too much away.

"Are you excited?" George asked.

Jon considered denying it. It would have been the natural move, the comfortable deflection, the kind of thing that had served him reasonably well for -- well, for longer than he was currently prepared to examine. George was watching him with that small almost-smile, patient in the way he sometimes was when he already knew the answer.

"Yes," Jon said.

George smiled, properly, and kissed him -- not dramatically, not the way that sometimes made Jon forget what city they were in, just soft and warm and certain, like a thing that belonged there. Jon's hand found George's waist without his brain particularly authorizing the decision.

When George pulled back, his eyes were bright. "Good," he said simply, and turned back toward the suitcase with renewed purpose. "Now help me decide between the hats."

Jon looked at the ceiling.

"You're bringing all six, aren't you."

"I'm bringing all six," George confirmed cheerfully.

Jon picked up his tea. Outside the light was still golden, the tickets were still on the counter, and the suitcase on the floor had acquired a seventh hat while he wasn't looking.

He didn't say anything about it.